Teacher Identity Research and Theory

Provides a concise, authoritative overview of teacher professional identity research, from its theoretical foundations and early development to current trends and future directions.

This book is a brief, yet comprehensive, overview of research and scholarship of teacher professional identity development beginning in the early 1990s and ending in the present. It includes five chapters, in addition to an introductory preface contextualizing the book within the study of teacher identity, as well as the author’s own work. The chapters include (1) theoretical foundations of teacher identity research and scholarship, (2) teacher identity research and scholarship for teacher educators, (3) the early years of teacher identity research and scholarship (1990–2005), (4) the later years of teacher identity research and scholarship (2005–2025), and (5) the future of teacher identity research and scholarship. This book is an important resource for researchers, scholars, and students interested in the study of teacher identity.
The book begins with a description of the author’s career researching and writing about teacher identity and explains the purpose of and need for this text. In Chapter 1, it goes on to overview the multidisciplinary theoretical foundations of teacher identity study, as well as key research methodologies. Attention is paid in Chapter 2 to how teacher identity is closely connected to teacher education and teacher educators’ practical pedagogies. The following chapters overview two major historical trends in teacher identity research, called the “early” and “later” years, distinguished by increased attention to international contexts and online teacher identity. The final chapter looks to the future of teacher identity research and scholarship, identifying gaps and exploring possibilities.
Janet Alsup is a widely recognized expert in teacher identity research since the publication of her MLA Mina Shaughnessy Prize award-winning book, Teacher Identity Discourses: Negotiating Personal and Professional Spaces (2006). As a short, accessible handbook on teacher identity research and scholarship, this new text claims a wide potential audience among academics conducting research on professional teacher identity development and those interested in the theoretical and scholarly foundations of teacher identity studies.